Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The most overrated bands in history

The sacred cows you were told you must love. By Mark Reed.

The Beatles:
Over-rated hippy drivel. Nowhere near as good as everyone thinks they are, The Beatles are an OK pop band that went weird and up their own bum when drugs and indulgence infected them. Wandering around India with a maharja isn't 'consciousness expansion', but loafing. And if you've heard “Maxwells Silver Hammer”, you know I'm right.

The Rolling Stones: Oooh misognystic, derivative, dull rubbish that now exists as a franchise to be ruthlessly exploited by pensioners who haven't written a good song... well, ever, come to think of it.

Van Morrison: same old, same old. Grumpy bastard grumbles and hates his audience.

Bob Dylan: An apathetic busker who wrote some average songs a very long time and now is a parody of himself.

The Artic Monkeys: Load of old, noisy tosh with rubbish lyrics sung by scruffy oiks with a poverty / chip fetish. Drivel. (The Last Shadow Puppets are much better, because they don't sound like Sham 69 being fed through a grinder whilst fighting polar bears).

Pete Doherty: Kill yourself and get it over with, you boring fucking retard. You've mistaken being fucked up with being a fucking genius.

Amy Winehouse: see Pete Doherty. See also Adele, Duffy, Katy Perry, Kt Tunstall, etc. Woo, a woman with a guitar. Big deal. The world is full of gazillions of talents that care exclipse you but happen to have a couple of different chromosomes and thus, languish in obscurity.

Oasis: This generation's Rolling Stones: the two feuding brothers (one with a brain, the other a ridiculous idiot savant who married an All Saint) trodge around the world every few years, shitting out a new album that sounds like a bunch of b-sides from a band ten years past its prime, changing drummers weekly, and serving up nostalgia pie to remind everyone that they used to be almost tolerable, and are now a parody of even that. Whilst Noel Gallagher can write a decent tune, he clearly can't be bothered and the rest of the band between them try and fail to bridge the gap with more porcelain, dull stodge rock. Like watching grey paint dry onto concrete in a rainstorm.

The Verve: If ever a band deserved knocking off their self-appointed pedestal, it's this lot of half-arsed, tuneophobic chancers. Their recent reformation has had all the artist credibility of a handjob, and quite why this 'comeback' - from a band that should never have been famous, to be frank- yielded a truly tedious album I don't know. Whilst The Verve managed to combine their core ingredients - such as fifth-form philosophy lyrics packed with cliches, truisms, and dumb lines stolen from pubtalk, combined with a rabid, deluded belief that they are the Second Coming of music, alongside formless drudgy jams that are lacking in anything memorable (there's not even enough in the music to hate, it's just plodding, boring drivel), The Verve are a band that want to reach the stars and climb mountains, and can't even be bothered to. Also known as 'Messiahitis". Bloody prats.

(written by Mark Reed. More by the same author here)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's this guy on?
Bob Dylan apathetic busker, right?
Shame you didn't bother to explain why. Perhaps because you have no idea yourself...

Mark said...

At the moment I am on toast and coffee. Bob Dylans a sacred cow : he's at best Ok, and personally quite interesting, but his music is mostly awful. I saw him in Roskilde years ago : a cow attempting algebra dressed in a top hat. He came on, slaughtered every song (they were not recognisable at all), said nothing, acknowledged nothing, stood there, barked, and wandered off. His band were about as much as a glass hammer as well.

Linda said...

Bob Dylan didn't just right songs! He wrote poetry. Have you ever tried reading those so called "average" lyrics?

His music also inspired several generations of musicians.

He may not have a great voice but he had plenty to say and plenty listened.

Mark said...

...it depends what you want from lyrics I suppose. Dylan's never quite got to the "how now brown cow" level of Oas*s, but "You have many contacts / Among the lumberjacks / To get you facts / When someone attacks your imagination" is not far off. Nor is "Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King/I got forty red white and blue shoe strings/And a thousand telephones that don't ring/Do you know where I can get rid of these things/And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son/And he said yes I think it can be easily done/Just take everything down to Highway 61".

WHAT THE HELL DOES IT MEAN?

Or was it a case of quickly scribbling down whatever came to mind and wondering "will this do?"

After all, no one says No to Dylan.

And that's the good thing about Sacred Cows. I didn't even get onto U2, either!

Emma said...

Couldn't agree more, PlanetMe. I've always been wary (with the exception of a few) of bands who everyone seems to bow down to and accept, no matter what. Most of the time, they're as bland as fuck.

I think we're having one of those irritating, "Oh my God, how can you not like so-and-so" moments here, like the annoying kid at school who used to say "Oh my god, what do you mean you don't like Back to the Future/Star Wars/Pulp Fiction?!"

Each to their own guys, each to their own. I don't get Dylan either. Mediocre and overrrated to the highest degree.

Anonymous said...

I disagree with the writer. I'll tell you more, I don't think he's ever read any of Dylan's lyrics. What happened was, he went to a festival, Dylan was playing and Planet Me didn't like it.

SO he decided on behalf of the whole world that Bob Dylan's crap.

Well. I have news for you, Planet Me, open your mind and listen to "Only A Pawn In Their Game" addressing the murder of a civil rights worker
and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" about the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young toff.

And that's just for starters

Anonymous said...

So who do you like?

All music is packaged and sold to the masses, real 'dangerous music and lyrics' are marginalised. This is the nature of the cartelised, economy we live in.

Mark said...

Who do I like? Not enough people.

Never liked Bob Dylan's music, his lyrics or anything. I can see why people like it.. but it doesn't work for me.

The issue isn't that I decided that he was Crap on behalf of the rest of the world, the rest of the world thinks he's fucking great, and I don't.

Edward R. Murrow "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty"